So there I am again, on my way to Dubai. This is the 5th time in 4 months. By this time you would think I am like a local. I would know my way around, have my favorite hangouts, know the latest greatest and what not. Absolutely wrong! Truthfully, between fighting jet-lags, running into meetings from 8am to 6pm, and by the time the day is done you are so tired to go out, so you ask the driver to take you to the closest McDonald and straight to the hotel. That pretty much sums up all my Dubai trips or, all my business travels.
Business travels are mentally and physically draining. Going solo is particularly worse. When you travel for work, you are physically there doing work, like a normal work day. But your mind is still running at your home time. 90% of the time you ended up working double shifts simply because when your local day ended, your home team just started theirs. By the time you catch up with your team, next thing you know the clock strikes midnight. You are overdrafting on your adrenaline because you know this by-product of exhaustion gives you a boost to be a superhuman for a few days.
The day repeats for 3 or 4 times, then you fly 14 hours home, and shows up to work the next morning. Sometimes you take the morning off or the day off, and people will think yeah you deserve it. But really that one morning or one day doesn't make up for the fact that you have actually lost a weekend with your family just to fly halfway across the globe to sync up with the overseas team on their Monday . You lost more than just days on the calendar. You lost quality time with your family and friends. AND YOU FUCKING DON’T GET THOSE BACK.
The funny thing is, occasionally you catch a 30 minute lunch break, so you hop over to the nearest fancy restaurant to have a salad since there is literally nothing else around. Then you instagrammed your fancy salad or the latte-art just because that’s what people do and you want to stay relevant. On the way out back to the meeting, you saw a nice Ferrari parked outside so you took at few more shots. Next thing you know, you have 20-30 likes and people think you are living it large, eating out at fancy places, and hanging out with rich folks when you travels. Like a boss.
The irony being quite the opposite. There is nothing fancy about dining alone, and you feel so awkward and lonely that other than playing with your phone and posting pictures, there is really nothing else you can do. Oh and what about that fancy salad and cappuccino? Well you basically have to shove those down your throat as fast and as much as you can because honestly you only have a fucking 30 min lunch break, salad is the fastest to make and you need caffeine because of jetlag.
Business travel sucks balls. At least for the time being, for me. It's extremely exhausting and you feel incredibly lonely. Sometimes you feel like crying because nobody round you understands how it feels. It's not like I am flying fucking business class, staying in fancy hotel and work only 3-4 hours day and hang out with clients over martinis and sushi. I am not there yet. I am an operating partner, by operating, means doing all the fucking work. So I fly economy, stuck in a middle seat for 14 hours with a whole flights of Indian families with screaming kids (no offense, Chinese being the same and I am Asian.), and live in a remote rental viilla in a construction zone (because client doesn’t want to pay for hotel) alone with Ikea furniture and no hot water. I can't even expense fancy dinner, because guess what, it's still coming out from the company's revenue, i.e. out of my own pocket.
Some staff always go “take me with you next time, I’d love to do business trip too!” . Well the truth is while I would love to share the experience of hopping cities and travel like you are important, I can’t. I don’t really want to show my staff the crappy hotel I am staying in, or having had them go through the same. I embrace it as the operator of the firm, but there is no reason i have to put my people through this. Quite frankly, if the client does not pay for it, I can’t really afford your ticket anyway or buy you that fancy salad either, but I can’t fucking say that out loud can’t I?
I know this is just me venting, and I know I have to really just suck it up for a few more years until things settle. I do yearn for some recognition for the hardship being entrepreneurial or better yet, simply back the fuck off when you judge me for being lucky to travel and living it up to follow my dreams.